Deflectors vs Sheilds

I seem to recall that after the crystal was blown up, the report to Kahn was that Kirk had damaged the photon controls and the warp drive. The crystal is on top of the intermix shaft on the Enterprise, so we can assume it is also part of the Reliant's warp drive systems. This mainly means that Reliant cannot immediately warp away from Enterprise (which then limps to Regula I), but because one can assume Reliant's warp drive is similar to Enterprise's refit configuration, it means that the phasers have been automatically cut off. With the warp drive and photon controls out, Reliant has no weapons, while Enterprise can still fire a few shots, and possibly arm and fire the photon torpedoes.

 

Well, not according to ST:TMP, where the shaft is located relatively far aft as evidenced by a long corridor extending forward from Main Engineering...

The crystal isn't atop the warp core of NX-01, either, and apparently not atop the core of the Excelsior (especially in the later version that has two crystals) or the Defiant (which has eight).

...But Kirk was firing his phasers from "batteries", according to Scotty, not from the warp power system as in ST:TMP. If this type of improvement was introduced to the Reliant as well, Khan isn't unarmed; he just isn't armed to overwhelming superiority any more.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the long corridor forward of Main Engineering.

There is no crystal on the NX, or Defiant. Excelsior has one, and it can still be part of the warp intermix system (which in the movie days, doesn't seem to need to be a straight line like the TNG days) The crystal's purpose being something to do with moving power from the warp system to the impulse system.

Scotty also needed a bit to get those batteries to fire the phasers. As Decker said, the phasers automatically cut out when the warp power goes out. That doesn't mean they can't bypass it, but that takes time. Scott is very experienced with bypassing systems and has a cadet crew that has been learning all about they systems, so they are up to speed on things. Kahn's crew is inexperienced, and untrained. It would take longer to get their phasers back online, giving Enterprise time to rough them up even more if they stayed. They do repair it later over Regula before going to attempt an intercept on Enterprise (after getting the Genesis device and leaving Kirk behind).

 

I suspect that I'm not the only one here who's used slightly different shorthand when talking to the boss who's asking, basically "Can we do this?" and doesn't need to knwo the specifics, and the department you're running (who know more about the technicalities and are asking "Ok, which technique are we going to use to do the thing you just told the boss we can do.")
So when Scotty's being a command line officer and talking to Kirk, it'd make sense that he'd just talk about the shields as shorthand (with Kirk and Spock knowing from their earlier experience that there was a lot more to it than that, but that they could trust Scotty to deal with it); in the rarely seen discussions with his staff he'd be a lot more precise about referring to the screens, shields, deflectors or whatever other options the engineering staff has to do the stuff that gets shorthanded into "SHIELDS!" on the bridge.

And occasionally, he'll slip and talk about the screens while on the bridge, because that's the particular options they're using on this occasion.

 

One part of the Reliant engine shaft is vertical.

 

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0430.jpg

The corridor from which Kirk is arriving runs from bow to stern, both in terms of how the set was built and how it was photographed. It truncates at the front "pressure door" of Main Engineering. To add insult to injury, it is also extended by a matte painting, as can be seen - poorly so, giving the "floor" an upward kink where the matte begins.

But it is eminently logical for Kirk to reach Main Engineering from this direction: he has recently been to the Main Bridge, which is upward and forward of Main Engineering, and a vertical turboshaft coming from the saucer would logically run along the very forwardmost path available in the neck. (Perhaps this shaft is what we see highlighted in light green on the hull paint, now that it cannot be the intermix shaft?)

Sure there is.

http://www.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/nxenterprise/NX1.jpg

In terms of blue glow, there might even be three - two more atop the booms, at the "turbochargers". Although those were usually not intended to glow.

Well, there are four round things per side that glow dim blue.

http://trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ussdefiant/firstcontact0135.jpg

In ST3; in ST6, she has changed for two smaller ones. Both versions of the ship are witnessed performing various TNG and DS9 Excelsior class duties, because some early stock footage was filmed with the single crystal, while later shots used the modified model. The smaller model built for VOY uses the two-dome configuration, as does at least one CGI model.

Oh, most definitely. Although in TNG, the "shafts" tend to be very short even if ramrod-straight, and therefore a TNG style arrangement would be fine for ST:TMP as well.

Or then not.

Only in TMP. And firing phasers when warp is out for the count has always been possible in all of the shows, starting with TOS; it's an exotic quirk of the first movie only that the ship would have any sort of a limitation in this respect, and it logically should be corrected ASAP by Starfleet engineers.

I wouldn't credit Scotty's cadets with the ability to straighten a bent paper clip. OTOH Scotty would have a dozen things to worry about after Khan's first shots, rerouting of phasers possibly not being much of a priority (because the skipper keeps yelling for SHIELDS, not weapons, and there's a big hull leak and whatnot).

It's theoretically possible that both ships lost all weapons capability for a moment. But neither crew comments on such a thing happening, and this is not something required by the plotline or the background treknologies.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Well they do say "we can't fire" - possibly without a Scotty in Engineering (or near engineering) carefully husbanding the remaining resources, Reliant just can't get a salvo off straight away.

They also as you say had no idea what Kirk had left in the tank, a few torpedoes would have left Reliant in a worse state than Enterprise.

 

I would think the Enterprise's engine style (the phasers being boosted by the warp drive) and the automatic cut out would be a side effect/feature for those ships with that engine design. It would be corrected/changed with the next design of engine (USS Enterprise-A's larger core and USS Excelsior's transwarp drvie), but the USS Enterprise and USS Reliant are stuck with it as they have more or less the same setup. It does not mean the phaser cannot ever be used (once one can get power back into them), but they would no longer have the warp power feed into them to boost their power (the 24th century USS Defient has a similar setup of boosting phaser power as per Kira's description to Thomas Riker. It isn't clear if the loss of warp power will also cut out the phasers on those ship for a short time). One would imagine that emergency power would be able to get the phasers to work, but it would require someone that knows the system to do it. Scotty knows the system, and has had over a decade to play with it. Khan's people do not and had maybe a few days to mess with the ship. Scott's cadets have been learning the systems backwards and forwards for their classes, so they would at least know what they are using. Kahn's people have, at best, technical journals about older Federation starships.

Also the implication from the line about them not being able to fire because Kirk had knocked out the photon controls and the warp drive is that Kahn's ship now has no weapons. This would make sense since the pervious film showed that with warp power out, the phasers cut out. This would logically only happen to Federation ships between The Motion Picture and Star Trek IV. After that things are different.

Well then were is the intermix shaft?

As for the rest, I would equate them to different design styles and move on, leaving Enterprise and Reliant (with maybe Excelsior) in a grouping of similar designs with the crystal near their impulse decks that supposedly redirect warp power to the impulse units. Why it needs to be exposed and large on the ship is unclear.

 

There's nothing to say the intermix shaft that connects to the Impulse Engines looks anything like the blue perspex one we see in the "Main Engineering" set. Indeed, since it wouldn't need to carry anywhere near the same levels of power as the ones which feed the warp engines I would expect such a shaft to be smaller.

As to its location, the diagonal aft dorsal seems most logical. There's even a vent present part way up in case of an overload

 

We could speculate the porthole-free part of the neck contains a big fuel tank into which the upper part of the shaft taps, like in the TNG setup (going completely against Probert's original intentions, but closely mirroring his mid-1980s views).

Or we could speculate the TMP intermix shaft is nothing but a plasma conduit from the actual, but unseen, warp core to a variety of applications - the upper vertical bit going to the impulse engines but through a number of kinks, the horizontal one splitting into the warp nacelles, and the lower vertical coming up from the warp core which is armored somewhere deep down in the belly of the ship.

FWIW, the forward corridor issue could be satisfied by moving the intermix shaft (or whatever) aft roughly to the level of the lower aft endpoint of the neck. The lower part of the shaft would then penetrate into the big cargo hold, but to its forward part which we never saw, and would ultimately end in the ventral area with those big blue-glowing windows (reputed to be an arboretum, but the blue glow might instead indicate high-radiation activities).

Timo Saloniemi

 

Translight, not matte painting.

 

I sit corrected.

We could milk the less than convincing effect for what it is worth, and assume that the corridor really is much shorter than the translight artist would have us believe. Doing the same to the forced-perspective Main Engineering set would be very helpful, too; maybe it is as short as built, and the people working on the far end of the horizontal shaft come from a species of short stature.

Timo Saloniemi

 

When the Enterprise destroys the impulse crystal on the Reliant, Joquim says of the damage, "They've damaged the photon controls and the warp drive" and he insists that the Reliant must withdraw. The damage to the Reliant was apparently not sufficient to immobilise it, whereas the Enterprise was clearly stuck for a little while. We know that because Spock calls down to Kirk at the end of the sickbay scene to inform him that with auxillary power restored, they can finally get back underway on impulse power.

So whatever that crystal is, it is apparently not important enough to out and out cripple a starship upon being lost.

 

...But as said, the Reliant has two of those.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0115.jpg
http://www.timpalgut.com/miranda1.jpg

Whether they are identical in function (even if not in detail), we don't know, but if Khan carries a spare, then Sulu's clever choice of targets indeed "evens out" the fight.

(Incidentally, while the two domes are both at stern centerline, they aren't stacked atop each other - they cannot be connected by a straight vertical intermix shaft or anything like that. Doesn't mean they cannot be interlinked by some other means.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

Joaquim's response is in replay to Kahn's order to fire. Joaquim says they cannot fire, to which Kahn asks "why can't you"? To which he is told Enterprise has damaged the photon controls and the warp drive. (This would imply that damaging the warp drive will still cut out the phasers on Reliant, at least in the short term).

Enterprise's phasers hit along the upper rear hull to starboard of the impulse unit until hitting the crystal. Not a lot of hits, but apparently Sulu is skilled enough to disable Reliant's weapons ability without taking out the weapons themselves. There are also some internal explosions on the bridge, but that seems to be a feature of a lot of Federation ships over history.

Much later, in the Nebula, Chekov targets the Torpedo bays and warp nacelle with torpedoes. This again would take out Reliant's weapons, if it hadn't already killed or wounded all the ship's tiny Augment crew.

 

And phasers. They hit the torpedo pod with a torpedo. They blow apart the nacelle grilles with phasers, and a second torpedo blows the crippled nacelle clean off.

 

I should probably put this in the movie section, but does anyone remember seeing a brief long shot right after the nacelle comes off, spinning away from the rest of the Reliant?

I saw it in the movies and I've never seen it again on TV or VHS or DVD. It was only a second, but it left a big impression on me, seeing that warp nacelle fly away from the ship like that.

 

The fact that those two objects are obviously visually different from each other in many respects would tend to indicate that they are more likely to be distinct in their function. The dome on the top of the Reliant's impulse drive is identical to the one on the Enterprise's impulse drive, so it is not a far stretch to assume that the dome has some connection to the function of the engines and/or powerplant. Whatever that function is, the destruction of the dome did not cause irrepairable damage to Reliant's engines, as Joquin clearly tells Khan later "Impulse power restored".

 

Well, we see two domes. On different starships, domes close to the impulse engines are of different size and design. And we know of no pressing need to have two domes of identical design on a single ship (although the late Excelsior and the Constellation both seem to have two identical domes).

Since we have good evidence that different designs can do the same job, whatever that job is, Khan could definitely be considered to be "carrying a spare", and the loss of the dome might be crippling for any ship not carrying one.

Timo Saloniemi